Hi Marcus, sorry I haven't been able to catch up with your 365 sooner. Looks like you made a great start and I'd be really interested to see what your DIY softbox looks like and how you've made it.
The light it creates looks fantastic but you need to be careful where there is a lot white in the image. The camera automatically assumes any image you take will be a mid tone (as most scenes are), and as a result you can see the background in the last image appears grey rather than white (you get a similar issue when shooting snow scenes for example). You can correct this by increasing the exposure (1 stop should do it) in post processing, but a better way is to use exposure compensation in camera.
I'm trying to find a decent explanation on the web, but the easiest way to understand it is to take a picture of something pure white (a sheet of paper or the back of your light box), then take a picture of something pure black. You should find, when you compare the images, they both look... grey! If you did this in aperture priority mode, check the exif data and you will see that the camera decided to use a fast shutter speed for the "white" image, and a slow shutter speed for the "black" image. The camera doesn't know what it is looking at is supposed to be black or white. It assumes any scene it captures will primarily be middle-grey and exposes accordingly. In this case the camera has underexposed the image.
Check out the below link. Ciaran is a brilliant photographer (warning NSFW) and I've learnt a lot from his blog posts on his technique so his explanation will be much better than mine (and anything else I could find after a quick google):
http://www.thewonderoflight.com/articles/exposure-metering/
I really like "The ultimate dunker!", excellent use of the gingerbread man with the ginger biscuits, and nice composition, however the colour balance is a bit warm. I would cool it down a touch. With colour balance I only ever really worry about this in post processing. You can amend it in camera, but if you shoot RAW it's very simple to adjust in PP.
I really like "Raging against the machine", very cool image (in a good way) and beautifully lit. I think you've already mastered Macro with your spider image, and you did an excellent job of cloning that background.
My favourite image though, is the first one! Mainly because it's a portrait, which are always interesting. It's also a selfy, which is even better! I would say it's a bit cold, colour temperature-wise, but in this instance it works well, being shot from inside a fridge and all. In fact, I love the deep blue tones of the light in this. Great work!
Very impressive so far. Hope you find the feedback useful, but let me know if anything doesn't make sense and I'll be watching this thread with great interest. Good luck and keep up the great work
